Unelected Assemblies to Stay for Good.
November 12, 2004 by Ken
Filed under The Best of the Rest
The people of the North East soundly rejected an elected assembly last week, as the North East was supposed to be the easiest region to get to vote yes, what this means is that Tony Blair will not chance another rejection of his policy to regonalise England. So we are left with the unelected regional assemblies which had been intended to become part of a fully fledged local parliament.
Tony Blair in Westminster on Wednesday said that he was going to “abide by the result of the North East Assembly Referendum and will now continue to strengthen local democracy in other ways,”
When asked if he would now get rid on these unelected assemblies, which all have fully staffed offices in Brussels and cost millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money to run each year, the Prime minister said “We won’t abolish them because they perform a perfectly good task of coordinating action in the regions.” He added that unelected assemblies were here to stay for good.
So much for abiding by the results, obviously it was the wrong result! Had it gone the other way we can be quite certain that he would now be claiming a clear mandate from the people to divide England up into little pieces with regional parliaments, eventually dealing directly with Brussels and by passing Westminster.
It is time to start writing to our local unelected and unaccountable, assemblies and the local press, making it clear that we don’t want these EU backed assemblies, it is time we started to shine the light of publicity on their use of our money. What they spend it on, exactly how much do these offices in Brussels cost to run each year, what do the people do in Brussels that could not be done locally, my regional assembly has an office in Brussels with eleven full time staff?
As these assemblies are supported on a voluntary basis by all our local councils, we should also start contacting these people and ask what they intend to do about the situation, find out exactly how much money they are donating to these assemblies ask for accounts under the freedom of information act, we pay the council tax we have a right to know what that money is being spent on, ask your local council to stop supporting this expensive unwanted extra tier of government.
The Regional assemblies select a member to go to Brussels to sit on EU Committees of the Regions this was set up by the Maastricht Treaty and the wording was changed in the Nice Treaty to only allow members who had been locally elected or were accountable to an elected assembly.
“As regards eligibility for membership, the Treaty provides explicitly that members must hold a regional or local authority electoral mandate or be politically accountable to an elected assemblyâ€
As there will be no elected assemblies this must mean that the regional assemblies can play no part in the EU Committees of the Regions so why the offices in Brussels. As these people are already in place how is this unacceptable situation going to be resolved.
Below are the web addresses of each regional assemblies please get writing and help put a stop to these undemocratic unelected and unwanted waste of our money perhaps we would like to see more money spent on schools or police or local swimming pools but the only way that can happen is if we pay more tax or makes savings and one massive saving would be to get rid of these expensive regional assemblies.
